and most enduring barrier was raised between the
two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was established
between law and religion.

Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time
come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies
of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in
consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit
of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the
Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over.
The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a
success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province.
Other plantations were in time absorbed and assimilated by the Celtic
population; but vast revolutions in the ownership of land, accompanied
by the subversion of the old tribal customs, laid the foundation of an
agrarian war which still continues.

Religious and agrarian causes combined with the civil war in England
to produce the great rebellion of 1641 and the eleven years of
ghastly, exterminating war which followed. Hardly any page in human
history is more appalling. A full third of the population of Ireland
perished. Thirty or forty thousand of the most energetic left the
country and took service in foreign armies. Great tracts were left
absolutely depopulated, and after the rearrangement of land, which was
accomplished by the Act of Settlement, the immense preponderance of
landed property remained in the hands of the Protestant nation.

New elements, however, of great energy had been planted in Ireland,
and the field had been thrown open to their exertions. The excellence
of Irish wool and the cheapness of Irish labour laid the foundation of
a flourishing woollen manufacture, and with peace, mild
administration, and much practical tolerance, the wounds of the
country seemed gradually healing. The later Stuart reigns, which form
a dark page in English history, were a period of considerable
prosperity in Ireland, but that period was soon interrupted by the
Revolution. There was no general or passionate rising in Ireland
resembling that of 1641, but it was inevitable that the Irish
Catholics should have adopted the side of the Catholic King, and it
was equally inevitable that when a Catholic Parliament, consisting
largely of sons of the men whose properties had recently been
confiscated, had assembled at Dublin, its members should have mad